Wednesday, June 25, 2014

NETGEAR introduced its new Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band WiFi Router (R8000)-- the first tri-band WiFi router based on the new Broadcom 5G WiFi XStream platform.

The WiFi router uses six high-performance antennas and three network bands, one 2.4GHz and two 5GHz, to deliver a combined WiFi speed of up to 3.2 Gbps (1300+1300+600 Mbps) -- the fastest to date. It balances the network load to ensure the best WiFi performance for each device and deliver the maximum wireless range.

The Nighthawk X6 is powered by a 1GHz dual core processor with three additional offload processors. It supports NETGEAR Beamforming, a smart, signal-focusing technology that improves WiFi connections by locking onto a wireless device on the network and pinpointing WiFi signals directly at the device.

In a typical dual band router, for example, the video streamer and the Internet gamer have to effectively "time-share" the 5GHz band. With the Nighthawk X6 Tri-Band Router, however, video streaming and Internet gaming traffic can each operate on separate 5GHz bands so that each of them gets double the speed of a dual band router.

"Home networks are being weighed down by an exploding number of WiFi devices demanding bandwidth for more and more video content," said Sandeep Harpalani, NETGEAR's director of product marketing for Retail Network Products. "Nighthawk X6 solves these issues by not only providing more WiFi bandwidth but also segmenting slower and faster devices across different WiFi bands, and balancing the number of devices in each band to deliver the best-in-class experience for streaming, sharing and gaming."

Broadcom noted that the average household is expected to own roughly 50 Internet-connected devices by 2022, up from approximately 10 today. Its 5G WiFi XStream Platform features five core "Penta Core" central processing unit (CPU) to maximize network capacity. SmartConnect software is used to ensure each Wi-Fi device operates on best frequency band. The platform automatically separates coexisting 802.11n and 802.11ac Wi-Fi devices into distinct frequencies.